Regent Park Focus

This week on Catch Da Flava on Radio Regent host Nate and Diamond were joined by special guests; staff and volunteers from the Youth Health Action Network (YHAN). Which is a Toronto Tobacco Control Area Network youth engagement initiative that brings together young people ages 16 – 24 from across Toronto for the common goal of exploring and taking action on current and emerging health and tobacco prevention issues. From raising awareness to advocating for healthy public policy, the Youth Health Action Network encourage youth across Toronto to take action on current health and tobacco prevention issues. For this sessions interview we talked about the history of YHAN as well as the many initiatives that they have done over the years; which have resulted in influencing local laws and policies in board of health meetings. This including the banning of hookah smoking in patios across Toronto. Additionally we addressed the rise in hookah smoking and the glorification of smoking in gen...

For the second half hosts Levi and Divine lead the health talk panel and chatted about healthy and unhealthy relationships and how they can affect our lives. Additionally the group also talked about how we’ve grown as individuals in terms of relationships. We got got to share our past experiences and our history with past relationships with people, and had fun explaining about how our life experiences shaped us and made us what we are today.Most of the question that were asked was whether we regret our past or present relationships and if we think our future relationships be like the ones we have now or will it completely change. It wasn’t a very dramatic or emotional topic, it was more of a “open up and share” kind of podcast. The siblings Divine Bailey and Diamond Bailey both realized they have similar relationships and both have their different experiences. We also got to share some of the reasons why we are emotionally. -Divine Bailey  

Host Gisela Torres interviewed Megann Willson, a community member running for City Councillor for Ward 23 in this coming election. They discussed the new borders for Ward 23, which now qualifies the ward as being located between Shuter St to Rosedale Valley Rd, and River St to Jarvis St. Willson talked about her transition from being a business owner and consultant to working in politics. She discussed how having a business perspective gives her an edge in politics as she is determined to listen to voters’ needs and wants, and will spark that into action. Some of Willson’s platforms are to create more affordable housing and accessible transit not only in the community but all over Toronto. Make sure to vote October 22nd and have your voice heard! For more on Megann Willson, please visit: https://www.willsonforward23.ca/

In this segment of politalks, Gisela Torres interviewed Suze Morrison, a member of the Ontario New Democratic Party representing the riding of Toronto Centre. Morrison is the first NDP candidate to win downtown riding, beating both the Liberals and the Conservatives. Morrison believes residents living in the Toronto Centre voted NDP because they wanted change and people were scared of what Doug Ford was going to do. Morrison later on talks about the changes she would like to see in Toronto Centre, which right now her main goal is pharmacare and dental care. They would also like to focus on public transit, housing and reducing auto insurance but Morrison is unsure if they will go through since it is a majority government for the conservatives and her goals aren’t the same as Doug Fords. But Morrison and her team plan to keep on fighting till they get what they want. For more information on Suze Morrison, please visit: https://suzemorrison.ontariondp.ca/

In this segment for Politalks, Kaleb Marr interviewed George Smitherman, the former Ontario cabinet minister who is running in the new municipal election. Smitherman is in hopes to get elected in Ward 23 to be a city council candidate. Ward 23 consists of Regent Park, Cabbagetown and St. Jamestown area. During the interview Smitherman talked about what it's like to be one of the first openly gay politician. He later talks about his campaign and what he would like to implement in Regent Park, such as seeing the redevelopment finished in the way it was promised and to help alleviate poverty through local solutions. He also wants to help improve the community health and safety. Voting polls open on October 22 so don’t forget to vote! For more information on George Smitherman, please visit: http://georgesmitherman.com/

In the sixth episode of music radio show Refresh, host Nate Gurarie announced the show’s hiatus while he goes to school. The final episode included plenty of noteworthy songs by interesting artists. Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out) by Weaves, kicked off the show. The indie pop band from Toronto have been nominated for the Juno Awards and the Polaris Music Prizes multiple years in a row, and it’s no question why. Their songs are always catchy and keep you focused on where the music will take you. The song that closed out the show was Venice by extremely bad man. The song is a modern jazz piece with an electronic beat behind it letting you vibe along for the ride.

Date: August 20th, 2018 Hosts: Jeneace & Reyna Guests: Faith, Health Promotion Nurse & Shuhita & Nadiya, young moms Topic: Young Parents Talk: Accessing Healthcare This week, Jeneace and Reyna hosted a PowerfulxNature episode talking about the experiences of young parents accessing healthcare services. Our hosts first conducted a group interview with two other young parents. They began by talking about how tiring and demoralizing it was trying to advocate for yourself and your children in a healthcare system that often assumes teen parents don’t know what’s best for their children and shouldn’t be making their own healthcare decisions. Everyone shared experiences of being judged and stigmatized because of their pregnancies or decision to parent and talked about how important it is that healthcare professionals engage, respect and listen to young parents without judgement or bias. Our hosts finished off the show interviewing Faith, a health promotion nurse at...

This week, the Multi-Media group started working on creating a webpage that we coded ourselves. We had a partner and also had to brainstorm in order to continue with our project. Shian did briefly explain to us about coding and got us comfortable with coding. She also managed to get us closer by making us work in partners over the course of the summer. Shian also did an amazing job at taking us through the coding process and having the patience to teach us step by step if we were struggling. When we were finished, we showed off our web pages to everyone else. On Thursday August 16th, we started another group project where we have to come up with a virtual reality themed webpage. Basically we insert images into 3D objects and have people connect to the mini-VR (virtual reality) app and move around to read certain stuff on the web page. Shian also demonstrated to us most of the common parts of VR coding. By: Divine Bailey

This week, the Multi-Media group started working on creating a webpage that we coded ourselves. We had a partner and also had to brainstorm in order to continue with our project. Shian did briefly explain to us about coding and got us comfortable with coding. She also managed to get us closer by making us work in partners over the course of the summer. Shian also did an amazing job at taking us through the coding step by step and having the patience to teach us step by step if we were struggling. When we were finished, we showed off our web pages to everyone else. On Thursday August 16th, we started another group project where we have to come up with a virtual reality themed webpage. Basically we insert images into 3D objects and have people connect to the mini-VR (virtual reality) app and move around to read certain stuff on the web page. Shian also demonstrated to us most of the common parts of VR coding.

This week on Catch Da Flava Youth Radio on Radio Regent host Diamond and Beverly talked about Square Circle; a program for youth that teaches social circus and other creative arts with the goal of empowering youth to become directors of their own lives. We shared a clip ;from their showcase on August 10th; in which we interviewed Clarence the Executive director and founder of Square Circle as wells as participants both children and youth L.I.T (leaders in training) and of course parents of the participants. Square Circle; based in Regent Park; focuses on youth ages 9 to 14 in underserved neighbourhoods. These youth then at the age of 16 have the opportunity to become leaders in training and assist the instructors. With this program offering free in-school, after-school, march break and summer sessions new ways to build confidence resilience as well as educate youth. Teaching these youth aft forms from ​a mixed variety of activities such as juggling, poi, hula-hoop, aerial techniqu...

In the fifth episode of music radio show Refresh, host Nate Gurarie played a variant of new songs. Some highlighted pieces was the song Joshua by Dizzy, a four-piece from Oshawa that’s comprised of three brothers and a mutual friend. Their suburban town inspired them to create art and pursue it beyond the small town’s border. Another song played was Take It Easy by The Vaccines. A lay-about rock jam from the English band off of their new album Combat Sports. Nate has been a fan of The Vaccines for many years and was very excited to be able to play a song of theirs.

Children of parents going through a divorce can experience a lot of stress and anxiety. One of our radio hosts, Sean talked about his personal experience as a child of divorcing parents and how difficult it was for him. Usually kids don’t understand what their parents are going through and the impact of parents separating and divorcing can really affect their daily life. We talked about how it affected Sean’s life. Luckily kids are resilient. Despite his parents divorcing, Sean feels positive about his life. Although it may be hard, Sean encourages kids to try to be positive about the situation even though it may be hard for a young person to cope when their parents are going through a divorce. Divorce children may feel a sense of rejection or anger which can lead them to doing the wrong things in life. Sean believes that how children react to divorce depends a lot on how the family handles the situation. In Sean’s mind it’s a fifty fifty situation. “It can end up bad or end up...


For Catch Da Flava radio show, Sean and I talked about mental illness and some of the research related to the cause of mental illness. We talked about how sleep can affect children who are diagnose with mental illness at a young age. I myself can relate since I was diagnosis with bipolar and depression at the age of twelve and lack of sleep definitely affected my episodes. Without proper sleep it felt like I was never going to recover and because I was also tired never knew when I was normal. I wasn’t the only one with an illness. Sean also struggling with a mental illness. In his case it was anxieties that he was suffering from. It’s not always easy to recover from an illness that will never go away or will always be a part of who you are. Today I still battle bipolar and depression. Luckily I have the help and support from positive people that are in my life, which is why I won’t quit the battle. Having a mental illness isn’t easy to cope with. I have learn to be positive by surr...

Episode Summary: Steve was assigned to run the show for today, but Brandon has different plans in mind. Brandon hosts what could possibly be his last episode (for a while) on Radio Regent and gives us his final observations of Canada and shares what he has learned after spending last eight months outside of his home state of Texas. What has he learned? What are his final thoughts? Tune in to find out! Notes: There may be some clicking in the audio at the beginning. The soundtrack was created by Brandon Berry. Host(s): Steve Atkins & Brandon Berry Listen to Podcast Download MP3

Today, we started the day off with Shian’s program which covers general knowledge about new media. To be more specific, we worked on coding using a program called Processing Java. She also taught us about key terms that are used in coding such as function call, argument, variables, assignment operation and user-defined variables. Learning about coding is very intimidating and time-consuming. Just learning the basics is a complex task with many symbols to memorize. I will admit though, that it has gotten a little bit easier since this is our second day learning about coding. The fun part about the program is being able to make visuals using coding. Today, we were able to make a square background with the freedom of choosing any size and colours we would like. In addition to that, we learned how to make circles and lines appear in the background as well. As we go deeper into the program, the more respect and admiration I have for people who do coding and artist who incorporate cod...

Divine & Levi Today we hosted a radio show on Catch Da Flava on Radio Regent. We compared and contrasted gun violence in different areas of the city. We also talked about our experiences and the dangers we have faced due to gun violence. With all the recent violence happening in Toronto we thought it was a fitting topic for the community. It was an okay conversation between the both of us, but I think it could have been a better show with guest speakers. Divine, growing up in Regent Park, had more related instances than I had living in the upper beaches. So, having people with more experience would have made the content of the show richer. We had a moment of silence for the victims of gun violence this year and ended the show off with No Justice (featuring Big TC) by Ty Dolla $ign. No Justice was a fitting outro track for the show because it is about the wrongful incarceration of Ty Dolla $igns brother Big TC, and it speaks to how gun violence can affect people's lives. ...

Refresh Episode 4 - August 6 In the fourth episode of new music radio show Refresh, host Nate Gurarie played a collection of songs across the genre board. Some highlighted pieces were Can’t Do Better by Kim Petras, a young transgender woman from Germany, who makes adorable bubblegum pop music. Another song that was played was Dreams by Promises Ltd. A supergroup of sorts comprised of Charlie Brand of Miniature Tigers, and Jeremy Malvin of Chrome Sparks; the duo makes dreamy electronic music that soothes and grooves. Listen to Podcast: 2018-08-06

Episode Summary: Brandon had to take care of some immigration papers, so today, Brandon’s good friend Steve Atkins will take over to talk about his life as a corn farmer in Iowa. He’s only traveled outside of Iowa a few times, so he’s got a lot to talk about! Join us today as Steve brings a little Americana vibe to the show as he tells us about his fascinations with the sights, sounds, and smells of Toronto. Notes: Steve Akins is new our studio as well. The Soundtrack was created by Steve Atkins. Host(s): Steve Atkins Listen to Podcast: Download MP3

On July 25, 2018, Regent Park Focus welcomed 20 summer campers along with the chaperones and staff from  Heart to Heart , a joint project of Givat Haviva and Hashomer Hatzair - Camp Shomria Canada. The youth, half of whom are Jewish citizens of Israel and half of whom are Palestinian citizens of Israel, created video and audio resources to support themes of intercultural communication and peace. The screening of the final work is to follow later this season, and the resources w ill also air on Regent Park TV and Radio Regent. To learn more about this innovative peace-building effort, please check out a short radio interview with the youth participants at the link below. http://www.regentparkfocus.com/…/heart2h eart/Heart2Heart.mp3 You can also learn more about the summer program at  http://www.heart-to-heart.ca - Tyrone

By: Levi Linton This week introduced some new techniques to the group as well as the development of old ones. We began the week by learning about basic computer coding and how we can use the language in our projects. We began practising our skills on MIT App Inventor, which is an online gaming engine which allows anyone to create applications for the computer and Android devices. The objective by the end of the week is to produce an engaging app for the audience assigned to each group. Everyone has ideas, but now they must execute them. Continuing with the projects from last week, interns have been editing their footage, planning out their independent project ideas and finishing their articles. Matthew has already written the script for his independent project and is in the process of finding actors to feature in the short feature film. Radio Franco is airing their third show on Wednesday with featured guest, Sekouba. The RPTV team is in the process of editing their pilot show Wha...

Radio Show 3: Dans cette section de l’émission Radio Franco on a parlé de le festivale Caribana de cette fin de semaine dans la ville de toronto. On a remarqué d’avoir plusieurs chanson de l’artiste Dadju alors on a parlé de son histoire comme artiste et d'où il vient. Ensuit on a couvert le système d'éducation de Québec on a décidé d'en parlé de les différences et leur similarités de celui de l'Ontario. For the third show of Radio Franco we cover and discussed about the big parade of the Caribbean Festival aka Caribana that happened this weekend in Toronto. ​ Noticing that our music playlist had lot of song made by the artist Dadju, we decided to discuss his history as an artiste and as a person. We also cover the education system in Quebec and decided to distinguish the similarities and differences with the education system in Ontario. Listen to Podcast: